We made it back to the node before Team Mongoose got there. They let us know they had finished without an issue, which the system had already informed us of.

We had cleared wave two with 45 minutes to spare. That meant we had nearly two hours before we’d have to have wave three finished. It wasn’t enough time to take a break, or do anything else, but maybe we could keep this rolling

The miners on guard duty at the node hadn’t just been standing around. Once we started the node claiming process, we’d messaged Juana to start sending our gear through. Annie, Lakshmi and Mitch had hauled everything off the node’s receiving circle and sorted it into piles.

There were big heaps of crates and boxes scattered all around, all full of the gear Veda had sent us to use once we got our node fully converted and were able to start putting up defenses.

I picked up one of the crates and got a shock. It was eligible to go in my inventory. We hadn't brought any of this stuff through with us because none of this gear could be stashed in our inventory, at least not on the Threshold side. It had been brought down on big floating pallets from the Hub and delivered to our staging area. Then our coalition delivered it through the portal to us.

Our whole strategy was built around how much support gear we could get here and how quickly. The crate I held was labeled as containing one autonomous self-targeting defense turret, continuously reloading as long as it was connected to an active defense network with a base rate of fire of one shot per five seconds. The other crates had everything from the building blocks of the defense network we would need to erect to a couple of boxes containing the start of various buildings.

Veda had a lot more stashed back on the hub for us. She was waiting for the price of shipping it down to threshold to be more reasonable. For the first couple of days, space on the elevator down was at a premium.

I stored the crated up turret in my inventory, picked up another of the boxes, stored it as well. Then I walked over to the other side of the hill, pulled them out, and dropped them.

"What are you doing?" Sage asked, looking curious. "I thought these didn't go in inventories?" She picked up one of the crates herself. It vanished. "What do you know?" she said. "Rules must be different once it's in a portal."

"Yeah." My mind was racing. "That gives me some ideas."

I sent Juana a quick message asking her if all of our supplies had come through. She replied back, almost at once, that they had, was there something else we needed, and how was it going?

It's fine. Fill you in later, I said. My mind was racing. I didn't know if what I was thinking was possible, but I did know the next couple steps we would need to take.

As Team Mongoose emerged from the brush, looking tired but all in one piece, Grandpa said, "Now is probably a good time for us to take a break and start laying out the defense network. I know we won't be able to get it online just yet, but— "

"Hang on," I said, holding up a hand. "Sorry to interrupt you, sir, but I've got an idea."

He looked at me, eyebrows raised. "What's that, Shad?"

"This is more of a Lt. Williams idea and less of a Shad idea, sir," I said, formally stressing the command structure between us. "If I may suggest something?"

He nodded. "Go ahead."

"There's a lot of variables involved here. I don't know if it's even going to be possible," I said, "but I think I've got an idea for how we can get a jump on the competition."

That got everyone interested. They clustered around me, waiting for me to speak. I gave them a quick overview. Grandpa was nodding, Sage grinned maniacally. Even Team Mongoose looked impressed.

"The first step we need is to gain a couple more hours. I think we should trigger the next three waves and clear them as fast as we can. Then we'll see if my idea is even feasible. I want to send a couple of quick messages while we’re clearing waves."

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"All right," Grandpa said. "Let's do that."

We left Ice Spice, Lara, Bill and Bob to guard the node while Annie, Lakshmi and Mitch got to come with Grandpa, Sage and me to clear waves. Grandpa wanted a chance to see what the other three could do. He hung back and gave them suggestions, while I took the lead, rushing in to camps with Call ‘Em Out, catching everyone’s attention, and letting my team clear up the resulting mess.

While we cleared camps full of Skeleton Pirates, Cannibal Pigs, and a new variant that had just popped up, sea monsters coming ashore to try to eat us, I sent a furious slew of messages.

To Veda, I sent: Can you tell anything about the other teams in our sector? I don't have access to the map right now. That would be one of our early upgrades. Right now, we could only see the level map from our ship. One of the improvements Veda had sent along would give us a map table in our outpost.

I can pull up a list of who, but not where they are.

I should be able to check locations myself soon, I told her.

All right, I'll send you the listing.

Also, let me know which of them I should not piss off.

What are you planning, Shad? I could practically hear her alarm in her texts. I thought we went over the strategy and everyone was agreed.

Yeah, well, you know how it is once you get boots on the ground. Plans change.

We had not yet mentioned to Veda that we were trying to take a delta node instead of the gamma node she had planned on. At some point we were all going to have to sit down for a nice long chat.

We tore through the waves of spawn like a machine gun through cheesecloth. I wondered if this was supposed to be a challenge or not. Certainly, it seemed like there was plenty of time for players to interfere with each other during this phase.

The fourth wave was equally easy. The fifth wave changed things up a bit. We had five spawn points this time. We tackled the first spawn point as a group to make sure things hadn't gotten too much harder, and found our old friends the skeleton pirates. They had four officers with them this time and two different gunboats. Now that we knew to target the cannoneers first, it hardly counted as a challenge. I used another Boom Round to blow up both boats, we charged in, the skeletons died. Then we split up to clear the rest of the spawns.

Grandpa, Sage, and I were standing looking over the last camp, a bunch of the pigs. I paused. "Grandpa? We should have enough time for an attempt at my idea after this, but first I've got to find out which nodes are being taken by whom means getting to the map on the ship. I don't want to waste everyone's time if there's not actually a good opportunity here. I took a deep breath. Fastest way over to that ship is right through that camp." I nodded at the group of cannibal pigs.

Sage's eyes went wide. "No, Shad. No."

"It's not real," I assured her. "Besides, I'm going to be sending people in to combat knowing they have no chance of surviving. I need to know what it's like."

Grandpa nodded. "All right," he said. "Just make sure we're going to get a camp clear before you let them finish you."

I grinned at him. "You and Sage could clear this camp with one hand tied behind your back, Grandpa." I looked through my inventory and found what I was looking for. It was an early attempt at a fragmentation grenade Dwight had made. Problem was, it had ended up weighing about 10 pounds. Too heavy to lob unless you had trained in shot put, which I hadn’t. It would, however, make a nice bang.

I took a deep breath. "See you on the other side," I said. I leapt out of cover, sprinted toward the camp, and ignited the fuse on the bomb.

So, interesting fact about phase two. Death doesn't hurt. You blink, and you've respawned. Dying, however, is a bitch.

When that bomb went off, I felt my body being torn to shreds, the metal ripping through my flesh and bone. The shrapnel tearing me to pieces. Then, nothingness.

I opened my eyes, and I was on the deck of the ship. I took a deep, deep breath. That was not fun. I sent a message to Grandpa and Sage right away. I'm alright. I'm back on the boat. It didn't hurt, I lied to Sage.

Don't ever do that again, Sage replied. I just saw you blow up. This was a stupid plan, Shad.

I didn't reply as I climbed the stairs to the poop deck and shouldered in next to Captain NPC.

The map lay in front of me, different icons and markings covering it. Our ship was indicated on the map just off to the side of the island we had claimed. In the middle of the island was the Misfits Guild logo, a pair of barbeque tongs crossed with a hammer.

The two nearby alpha nodes had both been claimed. I checked their sigils against the list Veda had sent me, and identified them very quickly as large galactic conglomerates. Happily, none of them was Sicaris Corporation. We had had unpleasant dealings with them previously. Both, however, were on Veda's list of "Please don't piss these guys off. They could eat us all alive for breakfast."

They weren't who I was really interested in, though. There was a beta node not far from us. I had seen it on the ship map before, when we first came through, and had briefly considered making a bid for it. But Grandpa and I had already planned out our delta node strategy and I didn’t want to change up on the fly. It had been a tempting target, though.

Sure enough, someone had claimed it. I looked up their icon. The company was known as TriStar Unlimited, and was in a list Veda had labeled "Nobody likes these guys, but they come every time. If you piss them off, we might survive."

That was good enough for me. I double-checked the distance, consulted with the captain, and sent Grandpa a message. It's on.